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Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Obama and Nixon

RealClearPolitics has an insightful editorial comparing Obama and Nixon. There are few hints of this comparison elsewhere in the news media.

Richard Milhous Nixon was thin-skinned, felt persecuted by the opposition party, had a penchant for classifying political adversaries -- and journalists -- as “enemies,” and tried to control his image so fiercely that, ultimately, zealous aides committed illegal acts to further his re-election.

But even before that had happened -- and before Nixon himself began directing a coverup -- truth had become a casualty of his administration. This is the parallel between Richard Nixon and Barack Obama.

Sound familiar? And more comparison between the two:

And though the current administration’s evasions about last September’s attacks in Benghazi, the partisan 2010-2012 activities by IRS, and the unprecedented scope of the Justice Department’s snooping into Associated Press phone records are all unrelated controversies, there is a common thread.

Those who work for this president have a fetish for stage managing the news. They never simply trust the facts; or maybe a better way of saying it is that they don’t trust the American people to be able to handle the facts. Washington has been consumed in recent weeks about who, exactly, massaged the administration’s “talking points” on Benghazi.

One more:

Obama is never content to simply say he thinks he can show how wrong-headed Republicans are about the federal budget. No, he says they should put “country ahead of party,” thereby suggesting they are deliberately hurting the economy to hurt him.
This, too, is Nixonland.

But here is where the similarities between Nixon and Obama end: the media. At least to my own mind. Nixon had the media against him, and they forced his hand. Obama has the media in his back pocket because their politics are his politics and they want to get all the scandals behind him as fast as possible and are more than happy to go along with "I didn't know!" as an acceptable presidential answer.

...here is the kind of reporting that we're getting from our so-called news media. This is the Associated Pres: "Obama Agenda Marches on Despite Controversies."

Of course it does. "Despite Democratic fears, predictions of the demise of President Barack Obama's agenda appear exaggerated after a week of cascading controversies, political triage by the administration and party leaders in Congress and lack of evidence to date of wrongdoing close to the Oval Office."

Now, that's not journalism. That's cheerleading. They're all excited. This is the AP excited that none of this is attaching itself to Obama. This is the AP thrilled to be able to report that the agenda marches on despite the controversies, despite fears in the Democrat Party, despite predictions of the demise of Obama's agenda, all that's exaggerated after a week of cascading controversies. Remember, these are the same people, folks, who constantly tell us not to jump to conclusions. But now the news media are proclaiming the scandals are all behind us now and that Obama's emerged unscathed and that his wonderful agenda marches on. There it is right there in the AP. And, unfortunately, that last part about his agenda marching on is true. But that's only because it takes two to tango.

Scandals never stop an administration unless the media wants them to stop an administration, which means that no scandal is ever gonna stop Obama. I can remember people here last week, "Rush, this IRS thing, this is really gonna get Obama." No, it's not. It's not gonna get Obama. We continue to learn that the regime was totally behind it.

I wish Rush wasn't right on this, but he is.

Obama will keep getting away with murder, etc (in the case of Fast and Furious, and likely Libya) and no one will do a thing about it because he's distanced himself enough from his cronies and claimed ignorance the media is more than happy not to investigate any of this further. Leaving Americans' questions unanswered, despite popular support for further inquiries.

For more context in this discussion, go here. I can't resist including this projection and explanation, also by Rush. By the way, he always includes his sources at the bottom of the transcript pages, so feel free to check those out.

The IRS could end up getting bigger. Which is not what we want. But that could be, when nobody's looking a few months from now, the supposed solution to this. It was just a coincidence, you see, and general incompetence that kept 500 conservative organizations from being granted tax-exempt status for more than 27 months. By the way, during that entire period, every liberal group sailed through. You know, there's another question I have where I think the regime's dropped the ball. If they were really on their -- and they are on their game -- this is just a side illustration. But if the in the middle of all this if some left-wing group of people had popped up and said, "We were denied or tax-exempt status, too, the IRS was asking us all kinds of questions." Can you imagine how that could have been played in the media?

"It wasn't just conservative Tea Party groups. The National Association of Bald Condors over here, they didn't get their tax-exempt status, either." If the regime had come up with some left-wing organization also denied, but that didn't happen. Every left-wing group seeking tax-exempt status got it. Every one. Over 500 Tea Party groups did not, in a 27-month period. And Obama had nothing to do with it, folks, and the employees in Cincinnati are not political. Washington Post, New York Times, trying to convince us these IRS workers weren't political, just incompetent. And a member of Congress said, "You know, that's really cool. Let a taxpayer try saying he didn't know what he was doing when you guys come calling and see how that works for you. But you guys come before our committee and you want to say this happened because you're incompetent?"

Rush is also right that this delay for conservative groups cost Republicans and the Tea Party a lot of enthusiasm and thus lent to conservative voter suppression- not that we can do a thing about it at this point. And Obama will not have the good grace to resign a la Nixon. Not with the media and his gullible voters still behind him thinking that his lack of responsibility or supposed ignorance of events are good things.

Lest any of you Democrats pooh-pooh these ideas, I beg you to switch all the "conservatives" with "liberals" and see how you feel. Whether or not you are liberal, surely you can see sense in condemning illegal actions if only because you wouldn't want to have these things happen to you if the tables were turned. If the United States is better off without President Nixon (and it is), it most certainly would be better off without President Obama.

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